


Never Again

by Arakone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 15:52:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3214853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arakone/pseuds/Arakone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine your parents died and one night you sit in an orphanage asked by two strangers to jump down from the 4th floor window. Would you jump?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Again

She was sitting alone in her room, looking out the window, watching the stars. She felt miserable. Two months now she had been in the orphanage, two months of loneliness, sadness and misery. In fact she didn’t remember what happened to her parents. It was only two months ago and she couldn’t remember why her parents had died. The doctor said she had some kind of a shock, which followed this dramatic event. But she was sure she had had no shock, she just couldn’t remember. 

While she was looking outside the window and trying not to cry, a snowball hit her window with a loud BANG! She moved her head slowly to the white spots on the window where the snow got stuck. BANG! Another snowball crushed the window. BANG! BANG! She stood up, walked to the window, BANG!, opened and was almost hit by another snowball. She put her head out of the window. Down on the side-walk, she could see the shadows of two persons, a small one and a really tall one.  
She looked around if the other girls in her room had noticed anything. But they were all sleeping quietly.  
“Hey Marie Ann!” shouted a deep, but soft voice, which must belong to the tall man. “Jump down!”  
“What?” She thought and gasped. These people had to be crazy. She wasn’t going to jump out of the win-dow in the 4th floor.  
“Marie Ann!” This voice was higher, it was probably a boy. “Trust us. Put on some clothes and jump down. We will catch you! But you have to be quick when you want to be out of here.”  
She just stood at the window, unable to move or say anything. Sure enough she had been thinking of run-ning away. It almost seemed impossible for her to ever be able to find friends in this place. And in really dark and lonely moments, mostly in the middle of the night, when sleep just didn’t want to come, she had the miserable thoughts that nobody liked her.   
But down there, in front of the orphanage stood complete strangers who wanted her to jump down a win-dow. As miserable as she felt, as lonely as she felt to be, that still didn’t seem to be the right idea. She should just close the window and try to go to sleep.  
“Do you thing we scared her?”, asked the deep voice.   
What a weird question. As weird as two man trying to persuade a girl to jump down a window. Maybe she was seeing things? Maybe the doctor was after all right and she had a shock.   
“Who are you?” She asked with a timid not to courageous voice.  
“Good friends of your parents. We just want to help you.” That was the boy. And he had known her par-ents. That made her move. Not a thought of doubt crossed her mind. It could be a lie, a trap, some kind of awful joke. But none of these ideas ever occurred to her.   
She had been sad, lonely and grievous for the past two months. Her only wish had been that her parents would come back and everything would be normal again. Sometimes she had dreamt of a glorious knight coming to safe her. And some small part of her hoped that those two strange men where her heroes that would end her personal nightmare.  
“One minute!” She yelled down and quickly got back in her room, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and threw all her stuff into the backpack of her mother. She grabbed another pair of pants, several T-shirts and her teddy bear Garfield and also pushed it into the backpack. Another glance to the other beds, but no girl had moved. Three minutes after she’d left the window she appeared on it again. “I am coming down!”  
She was on the verge of leaving the window again to sneak out of the room, the boy called out again: “No! There is no time for that! And you could wake someone. You have to trust us. You have to jump. Don’t worry; nothing is going to hurt you.”  
She hesitated. She couldn’t jump out of the window. And if they kept shouting the other girls would quite certainly wake up.  
“I can’t. I’m coming to the back do-“ There was a noise behind her that made her twitch. She turned around und could see the light being switched on. Someone was coming.  
“Just jump!” The men replied.  
She hesitated again. “I’m afraid.”  
There were food steps coming closer. Now the boy was talking again: “Close your eyes and think of some-thing wonderful. We catch you.”  
The steps came closer and closer. There was not a lot of time left. Therefore she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and jumped. She fell down with an enormous speed. While the ground came closer, she real-ized that this had been the dumbest thing she’d ever done. No place for wonderful thoughts. She looked down saw the ground. 15 feet… 13 feet… 9 feet… stop. Suddenly she flew. She felt light like a featherSlowly her body moved down until she safely touched the ground.  
“How did you do that?” She asked the two people standing right in front of her now. The older man was really tall. She had to pull her head all the way back in her neck that she could see his face. He had long, black hair and wore a big coat made out of animal fur. The other person was a boy who had to be around five years older than she was. He was taller than she was, but a lot smaller than the man was. The man answered her question only with: ”Later!” than turned to the boy who looked up: “Let’s get moving.”  
They kept close to the wall avoiding to be seen by someone looking out the window. As fast and as silent as possible they creped the deserted street along and turned around a corner. Here they stopped and the giant man asked: “How would you prefer to travel?”  
“Let’s use the portkey. When is it time?”  
“In exact four minutes and thirty two seconds.” The man looked at a little pocket-watch. The boy held an old Pepsi-cup in the air and said: “Grab it and don’t let it go!”  
“Okay.” She didn’t know what to do. Instantly these people scared her. They seemed so crazy. She decided just to do what they wanted her to do. That’s why she put her fingers around the Pepsie-cup. There was no going back any way. And no place else she could go.  
“I almost can smell Mum’s cookies.” The boy said. The man smiled back. “Oh yes, your Mum makes awesome cookies.”  
She just looked from one to the other. What were they talking about? How could they discuss cookies while they were standing in the middle of the street, waiting for something to happen? Maybe the people of the orphanage were already looking for her. And what were these bizarre words such as portkey? Actually she thought she had heard this word before, but she couldn’t remember.   
The man who stood next to her touched the cup and looked at his watch. At that moment he started whis-pering: “Three, two, one… go!”  
The next moment she jerked forward in a howl of wind and swirling colors. Spinning, spinning, spinning, not knowing were sky and earth were. As sudden as this started it ended with her lying on the ground. But she didn’t lie on the dirty gray pavement; instead she lay in green grass in an area she had never seen be-fore.  
“What? What? What is going on?”  
“We will tell you in a few minutes with hot chocolate and cookies. “ The boy answered while he helped her standing up. He led them down a hill. They didn’t talk the whole way down until they stopped in front of a tall house, which looked like it would crash every moment. She wondered how it was held because there were towers on it that physically would fall down. The boy smiled: “Welcome to the Burrow!”  
When they entered the front door and came into the kitchen, five people welcomed them. Four of them had bright red hair like the boy, she now noticed. The fifth person, a man, had long white hair and an even longer beard. The woman who was kind of plump and the man with the red hair jumped up, came quickly to her and gave her a big hug: “Marie Ann! It is nice to see you in such a good mood.”  
The man grabbed her shoulders and pushed her a little bit away from him, then eyed her: “You have grow-n since I saw you the last time.”  
“No wonder, Arthur.” The man with the long beard responded. “You haven’t seen her for 10 years.”  
She just stood there, unable to move, with a pale face and growing eyes. Suddenly she knew who those people were; she knew all this strange words. But it couldn’t be. It was just a story. A fictional idea from an author who had written it down. She had to look really scary, because the woman came to her and put her into a chair. Somehow she was able to talk: “I know who you are.”  
“Sure you know.” The man with the long beard said.  
“You are Albus Dumbledore and the Weasleys.”  
“Of course we are.” Mrs. Weasley sounded surprised.  
“But it’s only a story! You are only fictional!” She was almost in tears. She had the feeling to become cra-zy. It must be a dream. Or shock. Or…   
The two red-haired boys who were still sitting on the table started to laugh. She looked at them and figured they must be Bill and Charlie. Dumbeldore smiled. Then he said in a kind voice: “Some things are. Some things aren’t.”  
Her eyes reflected confusion. He started explaining: “See Marie Ann. We allowed a Muggle, who you know under the name J.K. Rowling, I assume, to look into our world. She described our world amazingly, but added her own imaginations. The people you have read about exist all, the good and the bad. Almost all events really happened. Harry’s parents died, but Voldemort” –everybody in the room shivered by the sound of his name- “is not alive again… yet.”  
Her eyes were wide open: “And… how… I mean… Why am I here?”  
“You are my niece.” This time it was Mr. Weasley who was surprised.  
“Dad! She doesn’t know!” The boy, apparently Ron, looked at Mr. Weasley. He stared back first surprised, then understanding. “You are right, Ron.” He fixed his eyes on Marie Ann. “My lovely little sister. She just wanted to live her life what she called normal without any magic. And now she had to die this way.”  
Marie Ann put her eyes on Mr. Weasley. Mrs Weasley put a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies in front of her. She didn’t recognize it. Mr. Weasley continued: “Yes, Marie Ann. Your Mum was a witch. What do you thing from where you have this red hair? But she wanted a “normal Muggle” life. And she wanted you to go to a Muggle school. But now that she is dead, we decided to take you. You should learn magic, you should learn to defend yourself against the Dark Arts.”  
Silence. Nobody spoke… until Marie Ann asked in a quite voice: “How did they die?”  
Mr. Weasley looked at Dumbeldore. His smile died, but his voice stayed kind: “Marie Ann, although your Mum lived like a Muggle she stayed a witch inside of her. She always supported the Ministry and fought against the Dark Arts. She stood successful away from Voldemort” –again everybody shivered- “and she was an enemy for all his followers.”  
He looked at her. She felt how her eyes started getting wet. Again she asked, how her parents died, but her voice trembled. Dumbeldore stayed silent for a moment, then he answered slowly: “The followers of Voldemort decided she was a traitor.”  
Now she cried silently. Nobody talked or felt comfortable. After a while she asked another question: “When can I start at Hogwarts?”

A few days later she was sitting on her bed in the Gryffindor Tower in Hogwarts. The four other girls where sleeping. She looked out her window, watched the stars and a smile came up her face. Now that she knew where she belonged to, now that she was sure to be able to find friends, she wouldn’t be alone anymore. Never again.


End file.
